Friday, September 6, 2013

About a week ago, I asked artists to respond to an informal poll about where they lived. I wanted to see if there were particular neighborhoods that artists favored. I got 52 responses and added to that 22 artists and their dwellings that I personally knew about. This is in no way a scientific poll (below I'll talk about the information I'd want for a better poll). But the results are interesting and suggestive.

One thing I asked was whether you rented, owned or had some other arrangement (for example, you live with someone but don't pay rent). Respondents said the following:

I think this result reflects the age of the respondents. In some cases I know (roughly) the ages, and I suspect that the older you are, the more likely you are to own your home. In any case, a similar poll in New York would probably yield a very different result. This is one advantage for artists Houston has over New York or other art capitals. Buying a building in Houston is very much doable for artists, particularly if you are willing to live in a marginal neighborhood (which many artists are more than willing to do). Har.com is currently listing 19 houses for sale in Houston for less than $20,000, for example.

Owning a house provides you a hedge against gentrification--if your neighborhood becomes more valuable, your property likewise increases in value. You can use it as collateral for a loan or sell it for a capital gain. A renter, on the other hand, faces nothing but years of rent hikes as his neighborhood gentrifies.
Above are the neighborhoods that respondents gave us. When I read these neighborhoods, what struck me was how many I had never head of. Many of them are subdivision names, left over from a time when some developer was trying to market the houses there. The biggest surprise for me was Glenbrook Valley. Glenbrook Valley seems like a typical Houston developer-coined name for a subdivision. It is redundant (a glen is a valley), it is incorrect (there is no valley there), and it ignores the one natural feature that does exist there, Sims Bayou (hardly a "brook"). This is a neighborhood just north of Hobby Airport.

Glenbrook Valley surprised me because I had no awareness of it before. It not only wasn't on my radar as an artsy neighborhood like Montrose or the Heights, it wasn't on my radar at all. There are no artistic institutions there--no galleries, no art spaces, no museums. The closest is the Orange Show, as near as I can figure. But apparently a few artistic types have found it an amenable place to live.

Eastwood is a little less of a surprise. Eastwood is a neighborhood just north of I-45 and of UH.

I was very surprised to see that there were artists living in Greenspoint, a neighborhood that to my mind has nothing to recommend it (except for easy access to some pretty good Mexican food).

Houston is divided into "superneighborhoods" by the city of Houston, and I decided to look at their artistic population. (The "blank" entries reflect respondents who do not live in Houston.) No big surprises here.

If I were running this as a more scientific poll, I would have included some more demographic information--specifically age and marital status, two items that I think are strongly related to home ownership. (Younger unmarried people are less likely to own homes.) I'd also like to know what the primary source of income for one's household is. If you make most of your income from doing art, I suspect (but don't know) that you may be less likely to own a house and more likely not to live in a gentrified neighborhood like Montrose or the Heights. (I can think of several exceptions I know, however.) If your primary income comes from teaching, your spouse's job, or some other day job you have, you may be more likely to own a house. But these are just guesses! That's why I wish I had done a more serious, thought-through poll instead of the very casual one here.

Designed by modernist architect Mel O'Brien and built in 1957, it can be yours for $139,000. It would nice if artists moved into this lovely mod. Apparently they'd have some pretty artistic neighbors, too.

Is it interesting? I think it belongs on facebook. We're it more scientific and comprehensive the info could perhaps be useful for real-estate investment. Contrary to the perception of Houston as a low-cost city, the rent still goes up while wages remain stagnant. At least in West U, uh, I mean the Heights. Ruggles Green was the death knell. How many times must I be nearly run over by a gorgeous blond in a fucking Range Rover?! And studios? Forget it. Either over-priced early retirement homes with waiting lists a mile long or precious too-cute shiny new MFA douche cliques. I considered buying on the wrong side of 45. You can get something resembling shelter for a 100k and won't have to commute from Mars. Now I'm looking for a fucking bait camp or its kind. I never wondered a bit why Bess would choose that. He was extremely fortunate in regards to housing and livelihood. I thought it naive you had such a hard time understanding his choice of setting. Oh my, but how would he get laid?!

Nice to see people still referring to the Warehouse District as such and not its gentrified name EaDo, but East Downtown and 2nd Ward are within those boundaries as well. Throw in Eastwood and the whole area is part of the East End. Just like Woodland Heights, Sunset Heights, and Shady Acres are considered part of the Heights, but Independence Heights is not included. So Greater Heights: 14, and Greater East End: 11, based on geographical location and similar size of total acreage. Since Montrose is smaller, then it has the greatest density of artists :)

I wasn't sure what the best way to make larger groupings of subdivisions was. Using official "super-neighborhoods" was the best compromise I could think of since they have clearly defined boundaries, while something like "Greater Eastwood" doesn't. But even so, the super-neighborhoods are somewhat arbitrary, and didn't work for some of the respondents. For example, one respondent identified their location as 77047, which is split between two super-neighborhoods.

The best way to handle this would have been to get respondents actual addresses and then plot them to see if particular patterns emerged. Then it wouldn't be a matter of which subdivision or neighborhood had the most artists, but instead where the largest groupings of artists were, regardless of how you define those areas geographically. But asking for people's street addresses would have been pretty intrusive and I don't think I would have gotten as many responses.

Montrose's density is interesting. If you were assuming "artist density" was an early indicator of the gentrification of a neighborhood, then Montrose doesn't make sense--its gentrification is an old story. But I think the reason that Montrose has such a dense population of artists is because many of the artists who responded are older artists who bought homes in Montrose in the 60s, 70s or 80s, when it was not yet the desirable, valuable neighborhood it is now. They were on the leading edge of gentrification when they bought their houses. They used ownership as a hedge against that gentrification--a path I recommend for Houston artists.

Robert - I do have to correct you on a couple points on Glenbrook Valley, they actually do have a valley or two. There are small hills and valleys in the oldest sections up near Sims bayou. A lot of the artists have been attracted by the mid-century modern houses. When Glenbrook was new, it had a pricing structure similar to Memorial or Tanglewood & was home to all the big Italian families (Carrabbas, Mandolas, Montalbanos, etc) catch up here at http://www.glenbrookvalley.com/neighbors

This is great to see. I wonder about this, myself; so thanks for taking the time to do it. One thing I notice is that none of the artists polled indicated that they live in First Ward - where you have quite a few artist studios like Winter Street Studios, Summer Street Studios, and Spring Street Studios. So it seems that either those folks didn't respond to the poll, or they work in neighborhood with studio space but live in another neighborhood. This is not surprising since there really are not any affordable homes in First Ward anymore.

I'm going to guess that they just live in different neighborhoods. But it does bring up the issue of people who live one place and have a studio in a different place versus people who live and work in the same space. There are obviously many different reasons for this, but one reason artists may be willing to live in certain neighborhoods that aren't (yet) appealing to other people is the ability to get large places--often formerly commercial structures--for low prices. Artists move into SoHo in NYC in the 60s because the old industrial lofts are perfect for the production of large scale art; only later did the area become gentrified.

Greenspoint has nothing to reccommend which is EXACTLY why its a great place for artists, is open, cheap, close to all you need, but no yuppies in sight...just damn interesting people trying to make a living. I think that is the essence of H-town.

I was being glib when I said "nothing to recommend it", but not entirely. I work in Greenspoint every day--I'm there right now. The main problem with Greenspoint is that it is so far away from any supportive institutions--museums, art spaces, studios, etc. Of all the neighborhoods that got 3 or more responses in this poll, it is by far the furthest away from most of the visual arts institutions. Even Independence Heights has studios (Independence Art Studios up on Janisch Road). But Greenspoint has nothing yet that I know of. (If any Greenspoint artists wish to correct me, I would be happy to be proven wrong.)

I'm not a big fan of the word "supportive" for those institutions. Dependent is more like it, even for the best of the best, and maybe leeches for the rest. Greenspoint is near plenty of teaching opportunities, great affordable grub, I'm more likely to come across a black cowboy than a lapdog in a baby bjorn (ugh!), rent's decent, the photographic opportunities are splendid.I'm a hardcore lover of Houston that's lived in the Heights (twice), the Medical Center, Eado, and near the West Oaks mall. and Greenspoint is my favorite address. Even Buddy Bradley embraced the suburbs.

"Supportive", "Dependent" whatever--the thing is that places like art studios, artists spaces, galleries, etc., provide locations for artists to gather and meet and exchange ideas. Not that artists necessarily need these kinds of institutions--after all, the Cedar Bar was just a bar, but it ended up being an important place for the abstract expressionists to meet and talk. But the presence of an art institution in a neighborhood is, to my mind, an indicator that there is a certain density of artistic activity in the neighborhood. (First come the artists, then come the institutions--in that regard, they are dependent.)

It may be that there are more informal gathering spots for artists in Greenspoint--maybe they get together at Resie's Chicken & Waffles every Wednesday morning. (Which would be awesome.) But what I don't see are visible institutions. It would be cool if there were the Greenspoint equivalent of, say, El Rincon Social--a group of artists' studios that occasionally puts on a show.

The distinction is essential because those institutions are great reapers and aggregators, but they're lousy incubators. A vibrant art city needs both. It needs artists that reside within and others outside of the institutional cluster. One area allows the refinement of ideas while the other creates new ones and keeps alive most of what's fallen out of favor. I don't see meetings at Resie's happening, because of the way the city is laid out(you're not gonna bump in to anyone). The Third Ward crew seems to have a very interesting inside/outside dynamic going on, their community is pretty much the only one that gives me a bit of cluster-envy.

That mall is sad (although the movie theater there is really nice). But I'm sure it has a lot of available store-fronts.

Along those lines, when Exxon moves out from its space across the street (see http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2013/08/exxon-mobil-shows-off-its-new-campus-to-investors/), there should be a lot of office space that could be converted into studios or gallery space...